TheAesthetic of Us

by Kaylee Duff

I stood in front of a tall, narrow window the first time I saw her.From the third floor of my apartment building, the city was laid out below me like a blueprint, a gradient of greens and oranges and browns. When I was younger, I would stand up there and imagine I was a master architect—the artist who rebuilt the city from the ground up. Now I stood there watching her cross from one side of the street to the other.

She wasn’t tall, but she wasn’t short either, and there was something off about her I couldn’t place. I crossed my arms and pressed my face hard against the glass and squinted. Despite the cold wind blowing leaves off trees, she was wearing a short-sleeved shirt that exposed tan arms. Clean arms. Clean.

“Wow.” I felt the tingle just below my left wrist. This tickle of words on skin that, at sixteen years old, I barely felt anymore. I flipped over my arm: Wow it read. Below that, Eggs and bacon and Seriously, I need to use the bathroom and Go away and I likeyour dress today. There were dozens of Sures and Yeses peppered in between the fragments, my speech patterns dictated all over my body for everyone to see.

I looked back down at the girl.

There was still nothing on her arms. * * *My mother was sitting at the kitchen table, sipping coffee, and I took in the black, ink-like words on her knuckles—an Everything is changing next to a No matter what.

“Momma, where do the words come from?” My toes felt strange, as if they were in a pair of shoes a size too small, except I wasn’t wearing shoes (or socks or anything else on my feet, for that matter) and my mom was always extra careful to make sure my shoes fit perfectly. Everything in her house was perfect. That was why I wasn’t allowed to paint in the kitchen anymore.

“What’s that, sweetie?” When she looked at me, I saw the phrases I love you and I hate you under each of her eyes.

“The words. Where do they come from?” More tingles.

I showed her the question on the inside of my elbow: Where do they come from? I looked down at the words etched across my abdomen and looked back up into her eyes. “I know this happens to everyone, too, but I just wanna know why. Why? Where do the words come from?”

My mother smiled that smile all mothers seem to have and waved her hand. “Back in my day, they used to explain this to us in school. The thing is, baby, it doesn’t matter.”

I fought the urge to roll my eyes, and scratched at That one, please in the crook of my elbow. “But I want to know.”​I remember being younger—maybe nine? ten?—and sitting on the side of the bathtub in tears. I rubbed and rubbed at my legs until they turned red under my stubby fingers. Then too, my mom dismissed me in the way only mothers can. “There’s nothing to be scared of. You’re just at that age. Honestly, it’s about time. But don’t you ever forget: Nothing is hidden; no words that you say belong only to you.”

But now, at sixteen, I wanted to be something different, to be hidden, to have something that belonged only to me. “I’m curious. I just want to know.”

She rubbed at the back of her neck, at the words I do hidden by her collar and by her hair. “It’s just how things are. No sense in worrying your pretty head trying to figure out why red is red and blue is blue.”* * *The teachers at school talked about it, but I only paid attention to the words on their cheeks and their throats and their ears. They lectured to us, “The more marred a person’s skin is, the more he has to say. And the more a person has to say, the more intelligent he is.”

Government workers and politicians and scientists and doctors and teachers—all the smartest people in the city—had bodies covered with their words. They were to be admired, idolized. We were trained to look at them and want to be like them. I looked down at the I’m sorry in my lap. I hungered for something right in front of me; everything in my world was noise until I saw a girl with clean arms.

The next time I saw her was three days later, in the park down the road. I was walking my dog Lucy, her leash wrapped around a Probably and a Totally and an I’m over it on my wrist. The girl sat underneath a tree, writing in a notebook. Arms still bare.

I took a deep, long breath and went over to her. “Hi, look, so I don’t know you but… what are you writing?” I felt these words replace yesterday’s I really don’t like math class, but she’s probably the cutest teacher I’ve ever had and I cringed when her blue eyes raked my body, reading me.

She held up the journal, showing me the cover. It was black, not glamorous but still sophisticated enough to impress me.Imagine that—a journal being impressive.

“Looks interesting,” I babbled. “My dad tells me not to write because I need to be focusing on things that matter, like studying math, but really all I want to do is draw.”

She nodded a few times, stewing over my words, then shrugged.

I sat down on the grass next to her. I felt the sharp prickles of freshly cut grass through my shorts, stabbing at I don’t know and I’ll see you tomorrow.

She smiled, so I kept talking. “I think I want to be an artist. I want to draw things, draw buildings and people and life with colors and angles and histories.”

I thought about the mess on my bedroom floor, a disaster of dull pencils and long-abandoned projects. “I can’t finish anything, not lately. I don’t know why. I don’t know much of anything anymore, it seems. My mom keeps telling me art isn’t for me, but I think art can be for anyone who wants it bad enough.”

On most days, I liked to believe I wanted it bad enough. I looked down at my palm, the accidental poems made up of this one-sided conversation. I wished I could make art out of these words.

We sat for a little bit longer.

I told her about myself, about my favorite pieces of art and my favorite songs and my favorite people and my favorite words. I told her about my family, about my little brother who permanently had the words Fuck under one eye and You under the other, and my sister who cared more about her hair than she did about the insults sprawled on her chest for the world to see. I talked to the girl until the sun hung low over the treetops and housetops.

​She didn’t say anything, didn’t offer anything except shrugs and head nods and smiles.* * *​After that, I visited the park once a week in search of the girl. I went out of my way to walk over to her and sit down and respect her love of silence for about three seconds before words spilled out of my mouth like a storm that couldn’t be stopped.

“How are you today? I’m pretty OK, I guess. Since you didn’t ask, I’ll pretend like you did.” She rolled her eyes. I’ll pretend like you did stretched across my face, which flared red. “Maybe you should tell me what you’re writing.”

No response.

The next week, I tried again.

She listened to me talk, and pointed at things she found beautiful in the sky or on the ground or on the people passing by. Weeks passed by and I told her everything about me, and all I knew about her was that she had hair the color of mud after heavy rain and the brightest blue eyes that sparkled in the sun.

“I want to know more about you.”

She shrugged, as if to say there was nothing more to know. But everyone had a story.

At home, I stared at myself in the mirror, analyzing the way words mixed with freckles across my cheeks. I stared so long that my eyes unfocused and the room behind me blurred. The charcoal smudges on my beige bedroom walls swirled like paint going down the drain.

​Sketches of the girl littered my floor and A picture is worth a thousand words was etched along my collarbone. I figured I’d probably had more than a thousand words on my body per month and marveled at the blank canvas of her skin, the way it looked when we stood together.* * *

​My mother smiled that smile all mothers seem to have and waved her hand. “Back in my day, they used to explain this to us in school. The thing is, baby, it doesn’t matter.”

We sat under our tree in the park. The wind blew a cold chill up my spine and I shivered. The girl looked at me, tucking a long strand of hair behind her ear and raising an eyebrow.

“Do you want to go on a walk?” I asked her, sick of staring at her long lashes and the way her back fit perfectly up against the trunk of the tree. “Let’s go on a walk through town.” She nodded, shoved her book in her bookbag, and stood up.

I took her hand in mine; a stark black It’s just how I am intertwined with her untarnished skin. We walked past gray buildings. I looked up at the skyscrapers, gleaming silver against a noon sky.

“I wonder what this town was like when it was just born. What these buildings looked like before they were full of people.”

The prickles on my legs told me I would have new words to look at once I got home. She acknowledged the comment with an enthusiastic arm wave.

We walked past more buildings, startlingly bleak against the vivid green leaves of trees in little plots by the sidewalk. We walked around for hours; I told her about the different types of artistic movements and she listened and nodded and smiled and her eyes twinkled when I laughed.

After we made it back to our park, I turned to her and said, “I hate that I never get to listen to you. I’m sure you have more to say than anyone I’ve ever met.” Letters danced across my fingers, spelling Hate and Listen and You.

She led me back to the tree to sit down. There, under puddles of light coming from lamps overhead, she handed me her notebook, which was covered in words and markings and looked more loved than any person I’ve ever seen.

“It’s like you put everything in here instead of on here.” I lightly touched her arm. “And it’s beautiful. This. This is art.”

With a shake of her head, she flipped to a page full of words I recognized. They were words that I’d said to her, things she’d taken care to remember and write down.

Our first conversation and our latest one; it was all there. I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. I just rested my head on her shoulder and watched cars pass by.

She communicated through body language, little gestures I picked up on as the fallen leaves covered the snow. Nods and shrugs and smiles instead of words. I got a drawn-out eyebrow raised when I asked to meet her family, followed by a soundless laugh and a hand wave that gestured Why not?

The night I met her parents, I was taken by surprise at their nonchalance. “She talked when she was younger,” her dad explained. Her dad looked like my dad: old, broken, marked by phrases and lined by time. “Then one day, she just stopped. We haven’t figured it out, but she seems OK, and that’s all that really matters to us.”

Her mom’s strained smile showed teeth stained yellow, and I thought of my mom and her coffee habit—the habits we all have; my habit of speaking and speaking and speaking without thinking. Just that morning my mom, with her half-empty coffee mug, told me to be careful with what I said to her parents.

“Are you sure she’s OK?” I was worried, and I couldn’t help but let some of that seep into my voice and onto my side, right under my ribcage.

“No. Maybe.” Her dad shifted, uncomfortable with my pushiness.

Her mom smiled tightly, a Shhhh visible just along her jawline.

“We’re her parents, and we see her every day. She’s fine.”

“If you say so.”

She leaned her head so far to the left that her neck cracked. “Why, we do say so.” Black words and black meanings appeared on her throat, curling around her Have a nice days and May I help you?s.

After that dinner, I went home and I sat down on my floor surrounded by collages of magazine cutouts and acrylic-covered canvases. I thought about her and her silences and her family. I thought about me and my stories and my family and their skin covered in words, words that only ever told half of a story and never a whole.

The next morning, I descended four flights of stairs, crossed the street, and walked until I found myself in the park. I waited nervously for her to arrive—the faint Good and morning on my sweaty palms.

“Hi!” I shouted when I saw her. My thigh itched, but I made no move to scratch at it. “So I have an idea, but you can say no if you want to.”

She nodded, motioned for me to continue.

In lieu of explaining myself, I held out my hand. “Come over to my apartment.”

She sat down on my bed, looking out of place but not uncomfortable.

I took a breath. “Can I see your notebook again? Would you mind?”

She handed it over and I opened it. The black cover complemented the Would you mind? on my thumb. The pages were intricately covered with lines of words intersecting red marks. “You make art with words that no one else sees, and I want to try that, too.”

No response. Her face was blank, confused, so I continued. “I want to draw on you. I brought some Sharpies and pens, and I’d like to draw on you.” I pulled my utensils out of my jacket pocket and held them in front of me like a bouquet.

A moment passed before she moved, reaching out to pluck a fine tip marker from my hand. She smiled like I’d never seen her smile before. Slowly, she raised her shirt over her head and placed it at her feet.

So I drew with her skin as my canvas. All of these questions I had about the future and the words and this girl—my girl—came pouring out of me like liquid. I switched pens and carved vines down her arms where I desperately wanted an I love you. A tree trunk—exactly like the one we sat under at the park all those days—at her hip, branches reaching up, curving through empty spaces. Roots stretched across her stomach, coiling around her belly button. I drew leaves and flowers on her neck, mimicking the You’re so beautiful I needed so badly to see.

It took an hour and three markers before my hands started aching. She sat still, quiet, throughout the process, letting my hands guide the tools across her body. But when I finished and drew back, she exhaled for a long time, like she was going to say something but didn’t know how.

Tears formed in her eyes.

I smiled. Across the room, I saw the I’d like to draw on you at the base of my own neck reflected in the mirror.

We were our story come to life; my words on my body and her words in the notebook and our picture on her skin.She enveloped me in her arms and I clung to her, her lips next to my ear. There, she could whisper all her secrets if she wanted to.

Kaylee Duff is a senior at Bowling Green State University, where she is currently pursuing a BFA in Creative Writing. When not reading or writing, she can be found baking cookies, taking naps, or performing with an independent colorguard. Her stories have appeared in The Sucarnochee Review, Oracle Fine Arts Review, and Pamplemousse.